Tugging at a Tooth

A stout, red-faced man slumps in a wooden armchair, hands clasped behind his neck in theatrical agony, while a woman in a yellow dress — her legs flung sideways — has apparently knocked instruments from the side table in her own distress. The caption reads Tugging at a Tooth. Cruikshank's hand-coloured etching belongs squarely to the Gillray–Rowlandson school of comic printmaking: exaggerated physiognomy, cramped domestic interiors, suffering rendered as farce. Prints like this — sold cheaply from London shop windows — form a direct ancestor of the sequential comic strip: single-image gag, expressive linework, visible caption.